September 11, 2016

I mean, it wasn't a word until Hillary Clinton blurted it out in one of the worst quotations I've ever seen a political candidate produce:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right?” Clinton told the friendly audience fired up to see Barbra Streisand perform at the cavernous Cipriani on Wall Street. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.”

A comfortable setting. I hadn't noticed that Barbra Streisand was involved in this headslappingly stupid revelation of the contents of the mind of Clinton. We're frequently assured that Hillary Clinton is very intelligent — and we're being asked to rely on her judgment — but this was incomprehensibly stupid. Remember "Bushisms" and "Palinisms"? My post heading, above, commemorates one of the best Bushisms: "They misunderestimated me."

It's dangerous to misjudge a person as dumber than he really is, but it's dangerous — in different ways — to think that someone is smarter than she really is. And obviously, there are different aspects of intelligence. In a President, we want someone who can perceive all the factors and resolve complex issues with good decisions (as opposed to, say, nailing every geography question like What is Aleppo? or memorizing and reciting elaborate policy statements). Hillary seems to have let the audience in her immediate presence — Streisand fans — to loosen her up — she sounds drunk — and to say something that perhaps has already gotten laughs behind closed doors with intimates.

I'm not saying I think she did drink before speaking, only that — on the recording — I hear the woozy tones of the lowered inhibition and slack facial musculature you could get from drinking too much but that I assume she soaked up from her luxuriating position in front of an adoring crowd.

And I think we need a President whose judgment is NOT impaired by her immediate surroundings but who knows how to keep unseen people and places clearly in mind when figuring things out for us and for the rest of the world.

Not only did Hillary Clinton fail to anticipate how her remark would be heard outside of the ultra-glamorous Cipriani, but she also envisioned tens of millions of Americans in "grossly generalistic" terms — as if absurdly crude stereotyping belonged in presidential decisionmaking and people can be understood and dismissed as worthless under big inflammatory labels like "racist" and "sexist." It's not just an unfortunate quote that no one will forget. It's a revelation of a quality of mind that is exactly what we shouldn't want in a President.

And, for the record, "generalistic" isn't a word. It's as bad as any Palinism or Bushism, and I think some coinages — like "misunderestimate" (but not "refudiate") — are good. But "generalistic" isn't self-deprecating humor. It's a set-up for a kick at people she regards as not only beneath her, but not worth any care or concern at all. It's unnecessarily complicated. Why say "to just be grossly generalistic" when you can say "just to grossly generalize"? I'm suspicious of people who grab for bigger-than-necessary words — puffing themselves up, intimidating the poorly educated — so I'm taking the trouble to catch her on this choice of a nonstandard word.

88 comments:

Pence said that he was “simply taken aback” by Hillary Clinton’s decision to castigate millions of Americans, and was “speechless” about it. He said such comments by anyone, including Clinton, mean that such a person “who has that low an opinion of millions of Americans should never be elected president of the United States,” meaning that this adds to the list of things that already disqualify Clinton from the presidency.

"And now, instead of talking about Hillary's many scandals like the email mess, we're talking about whether half of Trump's supporters are racists. Not a bad ploy."

Yeah, it is a bad ploy, because it focuses attention on the number, and the accusation is of such a huge number, that many ordinary people are powerfully insulted. So what's the actual number? Now, she's pushed to prove it. Will she retreat and say it's actually really small? The whole idea that there's a big white supremacist movement behind Trump is just a big, embarrassing, insulting lie and Hillary is called to account for a lot of propaganda that she had been getting away with.

AA, "It's a revelation of a quality of mind that is exactly what we shouldn't want in a President."

Althouse comes around to what I have been saying for some time, What kind of an idiot sets up a private email server? I get it that she had a burning desire to conduct her bribery scheme in private. Greed - in the context of selling official favors to foreigners - is not good. But what about the risk of ibeing discovered? And then she doesn't spend enough on private security to be sure she isn't hacked. Losing iPads and Blackberrys. Just casual.

Not only does Hillary have extremely poor judgment, she is not very smart at all. Mafia Dons are smarter.

Althouse's post highlights what Hillary really thinks when she is with her people. The Right People. The Beautiful People. Hillary and her crowd look down on these other people. The Others. The flyover people in Omaha and in Madison.

As we say down here in Deplorable Country, there's quite a difference between Book Learnin' and Wisdom. Lots of edumacation can't always fix bad judgement, and I think some of the Deplorables are on to that.

Also, no offense intended, but Deplorables occasionally like to make up funny big words (such as "misunderestimated" and "edumacation") to gently make fun of people who think they are really smart and like to show off. Back in the old days we called this humor. Or if you finished high school, sarcasm.

The Brits like to use the word "gobsmacked". And I'd say that (to coin a phrase) Hillary was gobsmackingly stupid here. But then as the saying goes, ignorance can be cured, and stupid is forever. What you saw was what we'll get if she's elected.

As the old cartoon courtier told the cartoon King, "The peasants are revolting."

"I'm not saying I think she did drink before speaking, only that — on the recording — I hear the woozy tones of the lowered inhibition and slack facial musculature you could get from drinking too much but that I assume she soaked up from her luxuriating position in front of an adoring crowd."

Only if "luxuriating position in front of an adoring crowd" is a brand of vodka.

We had fun most of yesterday on twitter with #BasketOfDeplorables. Twitter is an insular universe, but a hashtag that trends all day long has resonance out in the real world. This comment will bite Hillary for a long time.

The C-in-C forum was another aspect of this. Lauer interrupted Trump and grilled him, but Trump looked calm and rolled on. I saw respect and courtesy in Trump's demeanor. Lauer was a human being to him. Hillary gave her canned responses, arms gesticulating wildly, and looked through Lauer. He was a means to an end. You don't call other human beings deplorable (and irredeemable) unless they are objects to you.

We're frequently assured that Hillary Clinton is very intelligent — and we're being asked to rely on her judgment — but this was incomprehensibly stupid.

One indicator of intelligence is the ability to recognize in advance the potential consequences of your actions. But those consequences vary with your circumstances. Hillary (correctly) believes the media and the progressive left will cover up for her when she acts stupidly, so she feels (arrogantly) entitled to ignore certain consequences. In her arrogance, she failed to consider the fallout from belittling 25% of the voters.

Anyone who deviates from politically correctness as defined by the Left is automatically labeled as immoral, as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic,” depending on the issue.

Usually carefully left unstated but the basis of most of the Left’s opinion on any issue, this gaffe is going to hurt because it reveals a deep-seated contempt of ordinary Americans simply because they do not agree with some of the assumptions of our self-anointed elites. For the Left no opposition is EVER legitimate.

… she sounds drunk …

To me she sounds and looks drugged. She’s licking her lips a lot. Psychotropic medication?

The largest demographic at her events seems to be her cheerleading press corps. Her staff does not seem to be able to rustle up enough supporters to make a real crowd; my guess is maybe 2 or 3 hundred at best. The contrast between her sparsely attended gatherings and the thousands at the Trump rallies has got to be disturbing.

It's not just the word choice. It's the pattern of thinking behind the statement (coupled with her recent blather about sexism, etc). And politically, she threw her best campaign asset against Trump into the can. That astounded me - it's such a huge error. =I spent half of yesterday musing over what kind of mind could commit such an error. Abruptly, I am buying into the talk about her health/mental issues.

Her best asset has been Trump's image (and you can't say it's mostly false or media-contrived) of just blurting out anything, of being superficial, unnecessarily derisive and thus unnecessarily divisive, and so forth.

And then she just had to go out and out-Trump Trump in this regard. What purpose could this ever serve?

It is one thing to slander your political opponents. It's quite another to slander the voters. If anything, this looks like alibi-creation rather than campaign rhetoric, and at this point in a presidential campaign, the candidate should not be all about spinning defensive narratives as to why some won't vote for him/her.

So --- Hillary, Barbra Streisand & a bunch of NYC gays all in the same room. My, my, who could have guessed that some words would come out of such an august body that wouldn't play well in the Heartland?

How about everyone that 1) isn't brain dead & 2) not on HRC's campaign team.

I think that, considering the fact that it probably took 5 minutes for the gathering to turn into a catty bitches contest, HRC should consider herself lucky that so far only one soundbite from the affair has come back to bite her on the ass.

From what I can tell from my progressive/liberal friends on social media, what Hillary said is an understatement. They have no problem in saying almost all Trump supporters are one or all of those things.

When you're just making shit up when it comes to "facts" then it shouldn't be surprising when made up words are thrown in for good measure. Personally, I was struck by the desperation weeks back when they were directly equating Trump and Pence with the KKK. She was way ahead in the polls at the time, and I remarked to my wife on the desperation of such a move. I thought it was because their internal polls were looking really bad, but she thought it was because they know of material yet to be leaked that will be extremely damaging.

And Patton was very generalistic. He exuded generalism. Generally speaking.

From what I can tell from my progressive/liberal friends on social media, what Hillary said is an understatement.

It's amazing how durable the idea of the widespread existence of wreckers, saboteurs, & counter-revolutionaries among the populace is among the Left. What's even more amazing is the fact that that the Left maintains the most impenetrable shell of invincible ignorance possible about the fact that, yes, the ideological fathers of their beliefs did indeed carry water for those very people who murdered millions of their fellows for being wreckers, saboteurs, & counter-revolutionaries.

The NPR website has an "analysis" were they twist themselves in knots explaining and justifying the remark. Most media feel she underestimated, in their hearts they agree that anyone who would vote for Trump is either an evil racist or stupid.

Why wouldn't she be a bit tipsy? Running for President is stressful, and this was supposed to be a safe place, a safe environment. My guess, by how often they are together, Babs is a good friend. Time to let her hair down a bit and let loose just a little. Still, there have been stories for years that she drinks, and when she does, is a mean drunk. Bet the Secret Service is already conducting lotteries to see who is stuck with her. At least, if she wins, they won't have as bad a problem as they did before when she would throw things at and physically assault their primary, POTUS.

The most unreported story of the week - and maybe the story that will be the most reported next week -- Trump's creeping upwards support among blacks. Possible edging above 15%.Looking at last three elections, blacks netted (after deducting black votes for the rep. candidate) about 15,675,440 (2012), 14,520,000 (2008) and 10,800,000 (2004) for the democratic candidate. Obama won by about 4,800,000 total votes.If black participation is say smack between 2012 and 2004 levels and if Trump gets 16% of that vote then the net black vote for the dem. candidate is only about 10,800,000 votes and the total vote margin by which Obama beat Romney is wiped out. If black participation drops to 2004 levels, there goes over another million net votes. These numbers may be a little off (they ignore electoral college and pop. changes between elections), but it gives one an idea of why high black turnout and keeping it over 90% for the dem. are pretty important.It also shows why Trump does not really have to get blacks to vote for him - every 100 black voters that stay home is a loss of 70-80 net votes for the Dem. candidate.

Hillary! is tone deaf and lacks political skills.But Bill would not be using the language he used this week if he did not feel a serious disturbance in the force.There is fear and alarm in Mudville tonight.

"you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right?"

Well, let's begin by stipulating, nonce, that "support" is reflexive. If the deplorable David Duke or the KKK supports Trump, then that is evidence that Trump in turn supports the KKK and David Duke, and those factions' deplorable goals. That doesn't actually follow under formal rules of logic but this is politics, so why not? Stipulated.

What other "deplorables" are out there in the electorate, and who do they support, and what share of HILLARY's supports are in that basket?

The group "La Raza" explicitly calls for the return of several SouthWestern states of the U.S. to be returned to the control of Mexico. Which candidate does "La Raza" prefer?

The group NAMBLA would like to see laws about homosexuality, the age of consent, and other laws bases on the prejudices of an earlier century reformed. Who does NAMBLA support?

Who does Malcolm X's "Nation of Islam" support? What about the Workers' International League? The Anarchist Black Cross? The Syndicato Tejano? Occupy Wall Street? NORML? Crips? Bloods? Satanas? PETA? Earth First? Nuestra Familia? The United Blood Nation? The American Indian Movement (AIM)?

I suppose not all such groups would be considered by all observers to be "deplorable" nor do all such groups actually endorse candidates. But again, IF "support" is reflexive isn't it interesting and instructive to actually determine and report what groups, with what goals, hope to advance or secure their power and positions under which candidates?

Hillary has exposed what most of us suspected all along. She hates us, she really really hates us.

The generalization of one group of people (or groups or people) as being less than human, as a "basket of deplorables", as if they are not actual people but just objects that are disposable and dispensable is not only insulting it is sick and dangerous.

Unworthy and un-redeemable is the mind set that allows a dictator, a government and a population of people to condone the destruction and incarceration of the others. Deplorable, less than human and put them into a basket. Hitler and the concentration camps are the result of this mind set.

When others are reduced in the mind of the political class or in the minds of the lofos who follow them, then it is acceptable to punish ..or worse for not being "correct". We also see this in the adherents to Global Warming in their desire to jail and punish those who have the temerity to disagree with their quasi religious tenets of global warming.

This mindset of the Clintons' that there are actually Baskets of Deplorables, that there are Coal People who don't count as individual Americans is not only disgusting.....it is frightening. Do we want to have that type of mindset in charge of us, where half the country is dispensable and deplorable?

Do we want to live in a world where the Cloud People get to dictate to the Dirt People, the Coal People, the Grease people. Oh....wait. We do. This is why we want change and MUST reject the Clintons and the rest of the Cloud People.

Actually, "refudiate" was a rather brilliant portmanteau. Bush was talking about the need for all Muslims to reject terrorism: those who supported terrorism should repudiate it, and those who do not should refute it. Smash up repudiate and refute and you get refudiate. Intentional or not, it was precisely on point.

For what it's worth (approximately nothing), my guess is that what she meant to say was "grossly oversimplify" but as she neared that part of the thought, the "oversimplify" slipped her mind and in that tiny bit of panic one has when that word you meant to say slips your mind, she uttered a non-word. I have this tendency also -- to say a made-up word when the real word slips my mind.

Don't get hung up on the reference to "Trump supporters." That's a distraction.

The truth is that Hillary and most of the left think and have thought that way about any and all aspects of Americans who adhere to traditional ways of doing and thinking since before Jesse Jackson was leading crowds in shouting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go."

The truth is -- they hate you, they hate you with an infinite passion. If you believe in respecting all human life and defending the most vulnerable, if you believe in morality, if you believe in respecting marriage, if you believe that men are men, if you believe that the money you earn from the sweat of your labors is yours, if you observed a moment of silence on this 15th anniversary of 9-11 -- if you believe in, and live in the belief of, objective truth, if you went to church today, they hold you in incalculable contempt.

They hate everything you believe in and want to destroy it all. To them, it is beyond obscene that you even exist -- and to them, you should not be allowed to exist -- and so what we see is a campaign of extermination. From the womb to the family to traditional institutions to objective science to a legal structure based on right reason and rational thought to the most hated and despised one of all, the Catholic Church, to them, it all must come crashing down. And so everyone of these things is under fierce attack. And it was under attack long before this buffoon Trump came along.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the populace simply does not care. Their response to the new order is "meh" at best. Many are all too willing, sheep that they are, to go along, to join in the two-minute hate and get a rush and thrill at beating down those who dare to not go along.

It has nothing to do with Trump or his supporters. They have been at war with YOU long before now.

To preface a statement as "grossly generalistic" is dark. To repeat the phrase "grossly generalistic" when purportedly apologizing for being "grossly generalistic" is darker. But she never apologized for her gross generalization. She merely apologized for specifying how many people fell within the basket of her gross generalization -- and that is darker* still.

Or maybe she just thought the "ic" was clever: "to be grossly generalistic, half of Trump's people are homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, ... you name ic! They're a basket of grotesque icks!"

*Hillary and her media comrades stopped bandying around the "dark" word some time ago ... so is it racistic, or are we still allowed to use it?

"It's a revelation of a quality of mind that is exactly what we shouldn't want in a President." Well, that's such a nice sentiment. But everyone seems to assume Hill made some egregious error. She didn't. The costs are low: progs have used this kind of language and the strategy behind it for a long time now, with no ill effect. The benefits are perhaps modest but nonetheless real: it rallies the troops, and nothing trumps the race card. Propagating the meme that supporting Trump equals being deplorable may have a positive effect at the margins in dissuading country-club GOPers and soccer moms from wanting to be associated with such rabble. There's no real accountability in any case: the MSM are on board. Nor did Hill and her crew think she really erred, hence the non-apology apology. They just want to win by any means necessary.

Apparently, Crooked Hillary fainted (or something similar) at the 9/11 ceremony today. She was apparently rushed away by her security/medical detail, and her press pool was not allowed to follow. My guess is that just blew open the question of her health. We may get back to the question of deplorables, and her arrogance, but I think that is going to be drowned out by her health issue questions. It probably didn't help her that her press pool saw her collapse, then were penned in, instead of being able to follow. Possibly the biggest story of the campaign, and they can't follow it. Should be interesting the next couple days.

OK....serious question. What happens if Hillary strokes out? Has a serious event that they cannot possibly cover up and she has to withdraw? DIES before the election?!?

Do the Dems then choose the runner up in the Primary? Bernie? And then just soldier on? The election should not be canceled because they, the Democrats chose the walking dead as a candidate. If they did try to cancel a national election there would be worse than just riots and protests. It would confirm all of our darkest suspicions.

@Leslie Graves -- her little "deplorables" quip was scripted. She'd aleady given it a trial run.

https://youtu.be/t1RX1-nZIIU

(H/t Conservative Treehouse)

@Bruce Hayden ... Fox picked it up pretty quickly and may have been the first. Her press gaggle was prevented (physically restrained?) from leaving their bullpen to follow her. Despite her campaign's demands to the press for a health-reporting embargo, given the venue, I think this "medical episode" will have legs. Her shoe certainly had a pair.

Until the winning candidate is sworn in, there's no constitutional protocol to follow. Even, believe it or not, with a president-elect.

It would be up to the political parties to decide what to do if a candidate died, became incapacitated, or was the subject of some legal action to make him ineligible to be president. How the electorate would take to such actions by unelected party officials is another story entirely. I imagine there would be millions of very unhappy people, if not major violence.

Fox seems to be playing it straight. The Clinton News Network (CNN) not so much. Spinning it like crazy. Her campaign said that she just needed to rest up a bit at Chelsea's multimillion dollar apartment, and now feels fine. That mean Donald Reump was so unfair making such a big thing out of her health, when her personal physician has stated generally that she is just fine. Who should we believe, one of her employees? Or your lying eyes?

Here's the video of Hillary's "episode". If you watch before she starts to move & stumble, you'll notice that 1) someone's holding her up & 2) the Secret Service is very well aware that something untoward is going on behind them, & 3) a group of men comes together at the end to block the camera's view as Hillary is placed into the van. Those guys doing the blocking don't all look to be SS, either.

Remember, all of this high-minded righteousness & and pontification is coming from Althouse, who voted for Obama after his "bitter clingers" remark, which wrote off about the same percentage of the American people as did Clinton's remark.

Dr K seaw what I did. Looks like the same big black guy who we always see next to her when anything untoward happens to her healthwise on the campaign trail. First time I noticed him was with the injector, but he was also, I believe, one of the guys who had earlier helped her up the stairs to that house last spring.

She is clearly being supported upright as the van arrives- so it wasn't a stumble on the way to the van- she couldn't even stand on her own before the van arrived. I had read they blamed it on heath exhaustion, but I just looked at the temperature for NY central park, and at 12:45 p.m. it was 79, and at JFK it was 82. At the time of her event, I doubt the temperature was more than 75.

And she loses a shoe! No word on if it was encrusted with rubies, though the deplorable and irredeemable Munchkins began to celebrate.

LOL!! My very deplorable thoughts as well. Ding dong....

To do a bit of concern trolling here, Hillary is obviously not well. She is elderly, a grandmother and being put through the paces that would stagger a younger and healthier person. She is like a race horse way way past its prime, long in the tooth and which should have been put out to pasture years ago, BUT.....the jockeys who want to garner the prize money, are whipping the poor nag to death for one last run to the winner's circle before she keels over and gets hauled to the glue factory.

Enough horse analogies?

IF this was your grandmother or someone that you cared about, would you allow her to continue on? Even if she was determined. Let her drive or take away the keys before she kills us all?

She said "generalistic" because she was speaking somewhat off-the-cuff and, as our gracious host has astutely observed, was feeling and acting loosey-goosey for whatever reason. So it was a mistake made because she was tired/intoxicated/overly relaxed due to the venue.

Scott Adams says the race is very likely over for HRC. Fear-evoking venue too symbolic to have wobbly nominee.

As someone on Twitter said, if she can't make it through a 911 ceremony, how can she make it through another 911? Surely her family will insist that she call this off. I'm with DBQ on this. Nearly every appearance is becoming an exercise in humiliation and indignity; it's horrible to watch.

Bruce Hayden said...Her campaign said that she just needed to rest up a bit at Chelsea's multimillion dollar apartment, and now feels fine.

Anybody else remember when John Goodman's "doctor" character helped Denzel Washington's character get "straightened out" at a critical moment (before testifying) in the movie Flight?Totally unrelated, just asking, just asking.

If Hillary! has to drop out before the election for reasons of health, the Eagleton precedent says that the Democratic National Committee picks her replacement (Eagleton, of course was the Vice Presidential nominee, but I don't think there's a difference in principle for the Presidential nominee). My best guess is they'll pick Kaine, and he might win. If she drops out after the election, but before the Electoral College votes, I think the Electoral College would make the decision in reality, not just formally. In 1872, Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican/Democratic candidate for President, died after the election but before the Electoral College voted; Greeley's electors voted for other Democrats. The three electoral votes that were actually cast for Greeley were disqualified. Greeley lost the election badly, so it didn't make any difference how his electors voted, but it still seems to be the best precedent for what would happen if Hillary won the popular vote and then died.

Voting day -- that is, the day when the Electoral College meets in their respective states and the real election takes place -- is December 19, 2016. If a candidate dies before then, the electors can vote for whomever they want (but would probably follow the party's designated successor, but that is not mandatory). If the president-elect (the person who gets a majority of the EC votes) dies after that date, but before January 20, 2017, then the vice-president elect will become president on that day pursuant to the 20th Amendment.

Hillary has displayed this paranoid attitude before. I attributed it to just being politically tone deaf, but now wonder if she is pathologically paranoid. Whatever degenerative illness she has now is exacerbating her underlying mental disorder. (Yes, I'm being quite serious; Hillary Clinton isn't just extremely physically ill, she's extremely mentally ill and paranoid on top of all this. All else aside, I'd rather not have such a person in charge of our nuclear weapons.)

It's been reported before that Nazi soldiers were given crystal meth to improve their stamina. The same is true about Hitler. I remember reading that JFK was also supplied with an astonishing amount of drugs.

I wonder if Hillary is taking any illegal drugs in order to improve her performance and hide her bad health?

or believing someone has graduated from Columbia and Harvard who calls a navy medic a corpse man,and Austrians speak Austrian and there are 57 states in the u s a a lot of people who went to two ivies show those deficits in education right?so our democrat eyes and hearts tell us once again to just go along with the program HRC is just fine move along

Pneumonia would explain a couple things. The caught maybe, and the fatigue. My partner had it a decade ago, making her two decades younger than Crooked Hillary, and it kicked her butt. And part of that was that she was too tired to think straight, and go see a doctor. By then, it was bacterial, and a stiff round of antibiotics knocked it out. My almost 95 year old father had it last months as maybe complications from other problems. He lost a bit of weight that he couldn't afford to lose, and didn't start recovering, so he could go home, until he had kicked it.

That said, it is convenient. This allows her to continue her Rose Garden campaign, where she mostly campaigns through surrogate and massive ad buys, never having to meet the public or the press. Now, when the Trump camp claims that she doesn't have enough energy to be President, if she doesn't have enough energy to campaign, her surrogates and toadies can just blame it on the Pneumonia.

The most amazing thing was that all liberal "reporters" proclaimed that the right-wingers are crazy for claiming that it clearly was more than a simple cough, or even an allergy. And now they repeat after Hillary's doctor - "it's just pneumonia, nothing else."

So how come that evil conservatives so easily diagnosed that her cough was NOT caused by allergy - and all the smartest liberal doctors in the world could not?

Or maybe, "We 've always been at war with Eastasia", and it was always "pneumonia", and everyone knew about it?

I am unaware that Hillary has ever given anyone reason to think she is really smart. Somewhat above average intelligence, in that she managed to finish law school, sure. But what has she done that makes you think she is in the same league, mentally, as the average PhD from a decent grad school? She tends to be robotic in all but the friendliest interviews, and I've never seen her spontaneously say anything witty. Just about all of the college professors I've ever met strike me as considerably smarter than Hillary, as do many of the commenters here, especially Laslo. (I'm not kidding about that. Wit requires intelligence.) Aside from riding on her truly talented husband's coattails, what notable accomplishments can she claim?

So earlier in the day, she emerges from Chelsea's apartment claiming she just got overheated and now feels great! Reported by local NY news sources.

And now her campaign says she has pneumonia, diagnosed on the same day she called the voters 'deplorable'. Have you ever known anyone feeling great who has pneumonia?

1. It takes the deplorable story out of the headlines.2. It gives her an excuse to avoid public appearances.3. If she does have another 'episode' in public, it gives her cover for her serious illness; she can blame it on pneumonia.